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Almost three years ago, former elementary school art teacher Erin Harris saw a video about children in Memphis who were working with an artist to start a sculpture garden. She still recalls the happy sight of a few boys in the video throwing balloons filled with paint at an old fence, as well as the reaction the footage generated from her.

Hard Rock Cafe Memphis will host the seventh annual Hard Rock Guitar Drop Wednesday, Dec. 31, from 6:30 p.m. to Thursday, Jan. 1, at 2 a.m. at Hard Rock, 126 Beale St. The event will feature live music inside and outside the cafe, including a headline performance by The Bar-Kays. General admission is $20. Visit hardrock.com/memphis for more information.

The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis made it easier for a dozen Memphis nonprofits to continue the good they do in the community when it announced the recipients of this year’s GiVE 365 grantees last week.

National Hispanic Professional Organization-Memphis will meet Thursday, July 11, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Hilton Memphis, 939 Ridge Lake Blvd. Nancy Coffee, president and CEO of the New Memphis Institute, will speak. Cost is free for members and $20 for nonmembers. R.S.V.P. to info@nhpomemphis.us or 466-6476.

Telesis Community Credit Union has bought back a mixed-use building at 460 Tennessee St. for $3 million at a foreclosure sale. The Downtown property went into foreclosure after 460 Tennessee Street LLC defaulted on a 2007 loan for $3 million through Telesis.

When the group of architects and planners working on a bicycle-pedestrian path connecting the Shelby Farms Greenline with Overton Park went beyond the end of the Greenline onto Tillman Street recently, they had a Memphis Police bicycle escort.

Toney Armstrong is the youngest director of the Memphis Police Department to come out of the ranks. At 44 years old, Armstrong has been tapped to lead a department whose emphasis on technology and statistics is credited with dropping the city’s crime rate dramatically since 2006.

The new Memphis Police Director is the deputy director under departing director Larry Godwin.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Tuesday confirmed what many police department insiders thought and announced he is tapping Toney Armstrong to be the new police director effective April 15. That’s the date when Godwin retires.

Robert Sillerman has resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of CKX Inc., the company that owns 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises.

Sillerman's resignation from the two positions and from the company's board of directors is effective immediately. It was announced in a filing by the company Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sillerman said in a press release that came with the SEC filing that he quit to pursue other interests including a possible acquisition of CKX. Sillerman had hoped another affiliated company, 19x, would acquire CKX. But the acquistiion stalled and was called off because of national economic conditions.

As recently as last month, he emphasized CKX remained committed to the Graceland overhaul involving an entertainment district with hotels and nightclubs around the mansion where Elvis Presley lived.

City leaders have already begun planning for public improvements in the area.

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The first indication of changes to come along Elvis Presley Boulevard between Brooks Road and Shelby Drive will be surveyors working in the area as it begins the annual tourism buildup to August, when Elvis fans commemorate the icon’s death.

The planning that is just beginning will eventually complement a new plan for an overhaul of Graceland by CKX, the company that owns 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises.

CKX CEO Bob Sillerman has proposed leaving Graceland as it is, but relocating the plaza where visitors board buses from the west side of the street to the same side as Graceland. The current plaza area would be developed as an entertainment district with restaurants, hotels and other attractions.

Sillerman proposed a general outline of his plans for Graceland in 2007. But CKX has indicated since then in filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that those plans could change at least in their timing because of the economy.

Sillerman has met with city officials and insisted he remains committed to transforming the area. Based on that, the Mayor A C Wharton Jr.’s administration has come up with $250,000 to begin planning for the improvements to Elvis Presley Boulevard.

Wharton wants to have city commitments ready by July 1.

“We’re trying to get a running start on this,” city engineer Wain Gaskins told a crowd of more than 200 people last month at the Whitehaven Community Center. “We are not very far into the process.”

The surveyors will take the city’s planning a step further. Gaskins said consultants will begin this month talking with business owners along the corridor about possibly moving utilities. Underground power lines are one possibility to eliminate power lines and poles.

The Rev. Lester Baskin of Middle Baptist Church was among those listening intently in the community center gymnasium and looking over renderings that Gaskins said are just ideas and not necessarily what the final plan will look like.

Baskin said he favors coordinated commercial development along the boulevard.

“I have been in this area for about 40 years and I would like to see it become more and more,” he told The Daily News. “I know that whoever comes to Memphis, you have to come to Whitehaven because the airport is in Whitehaven. FedEx is Whitehaven. UPS is Whitehaven. There are so many other places.”

Elvis Presley Boulevard is also part of a highway with state and federal designations. Because of that, the city hopes to draw $2 million in state and federal funding toward the public project. No city funding is available for construction because there is no plan.

The first phase would be the boulevard’s southern end from Shelby Drive to Kraft Road. Phase two is from Craft to Winchester Road. And the third phase is from Winchester to Brooks Road.

Gaskins said the Interstate 55 interchange, north of Brooks, needs an overhaul but is a “separate project” the city will tackle at some later date. The Tennessee Department of Transportation is doing an interchange modification study, he added.

“It’s too much to handle in one bite,” Gaskins said of including the interchange in the boulevard project.

Demolition on a Whitehaven apartment complex owned by Elvis Presley Enterprises could begin by the end of this year, said Memphis City Council member Harold Collins.

And the pastor of the Whitehaven church where Collins held a standing-room-only town hall meeting this week indicated land speculators are preparing for the pending $250 million makeover of Graceland into a tourism development zone.

Ethan Jacobs was one of six people who died violently in Memphis last Memorial Day weekend. Earlier that month, the rape and home-invasion robbery of a woman in Chickasaw Gardens began an emotional spike in the city's collective reaction to a pervasive crime problem.

When Willie and Rena Jeffries bought their home in 1995, the property directly behind theirs was being used as a horse pasture.

In the years since, a major developer has turned the pasture into a subdivision - and turned their 2,600-square-foot, two-story home into a major disaster area, they allege in a lawsuit filed last week in Shelby County Chancery Court.

The stretch of Lamar Avenue that runs near American Way is very much a neighborhood in transition. With the closing of the Mall of Memphis in December 2003, the area lost a major shopping venue, and in recent years, it has been overrun by crime and blight.

Beginning Friday, spinach, squash and the trendiest art complement one another with the grand opening of a farmers market in the South Main distr...

31. Archived Article: Idb (lead) - Friday, August 10, 2001 Three companies seek tax freezes on $22 million in new investment Three seek tax freezes on $22 million in investment By SUE PEASE The Daily News Three tax freeze applications representing $22 million in capital investment and about 280 new jobs wil...

33. Archived Article: Memos - Wednesday, November 01, 1995 memos 11/1 Palmer Wilson Jr., M.D., has joined the staff of Health First Medical Group's Internal Medicine Department. Wilson attended medical school at the University of Tennessee-Memphis and completed his internship and residency at the Methodist ...